User Experience Design

It's spring, so now is a perfect time to do some web spring cleaning. Take a fresh look at your marketing efforts, channel strategies and content and take action to set your business up for success this year.

When searching for an enterprise content management system, the market can be overwhelming. As one of the leaders in the field, Sitecore stands out among the others, providing advantages for entire organizations. As a Sitecore Gold Partner, Roundedcube has outlined some of the high level advantages to Sitecore from four team perspectives; executives, developers and IT, marketing and content management.

Not too long ago, in a sales briefing with a prospect, the topic of e-commerce came up with a request for a recommendation. At first, we hemmed a bit-- we’d need data and content requirements, budget, integration dependencies, etc. and only then could we provide a definitive recommendation after a thorough discovery…yada..yada…yada. It wasn’t until later, driving back, that we discussed as a team what we had all been thinking in the meeting. For many of our customers, for many scenarios, it makes more sense to build custom e-commerce than try and find something on the one size fits all market. Period.

The carousel has long passed its popular days in the world of digital design. So what has succeeded the magnificent real estate that is the front-page and first impression for each website? The hero image. A hero image is basically a large photograph; the carousel simplified to one, very large message with the goal of standing out amongst the other billions of messages our brains are served every day.

As mobile traffic continues to increase and Google begins to prioritize its search rankings, it’s more imperative than ever to have a website that is strategically optimized for mobile. Here at Roundedcube, our clients include companies and organizations from a wide variety of industries, in many different sizes and structures. And just as with the desktop experience, one size definitely does not fit all. The good news is that there are numerous options when it comes to mobile. One of our top priorities is to work closely with each of our clients to determine the best fitting mobile solution for their organization and their audience.

It’s been called the “Mobilegeddon” by the blogosphere: A Google search algorithm change that threatens to punish sites without mobile capability. Google has long set the bar for website usability, punishing confusing click bait and spam as it indexes and ranks the world’s websites and offering guides to Mobile Best Practices to put usability first, but this feels drastically different. First of all it’s very public and not something that is seeping up slowly over time from the SEO community. Many changes in the past were incremental and done quietly, announced after the fact in some cases -- the loss or gain of website traffic based on algorithm tweaking was likely not felt at all by marketers. This one seems bigger and the reason is that it affects most of your websites traffic.

We just wrapped up our first official meeting of the St. Louis Sitecore User Group and I couldn't be more pleased with the member turn-out, engaging conversations, and panelist insights! If you missed it, we'll try to catch you up. We hope you'll join us next time.

Navigate to your favorite website's homepage. What do you see? A menu, some content, and most likely an image/feature carousel. Most websites have a carousel on their homepage that featured different promotions on their site. Companies want users to see as much relevant content as possible upon the initial visit to their site without taking up too much space. What most companies fail to realize is that the carousel is not a viable solution for this issue.

The problem with trends in website design in a nutshell is that they are just that: trends. The same goes for trends in anything, from fashion to food. Having something trendy is good until it isn't anymore. Will any cool new shiny thing you're doing in web design today become reviled and/or mocked like trends of yesteryear, like the all-Flash corporate website? Glass effects on all photos? Hover menus four or more levels deep?

The past and the future are in a brutal tug of war in the web design and development field. Two needs are currently duking it out with many websites: the need to be mobile and tablet-friendly versus the need to still support older browsers (sometimes even Internet Explorer 7).

In my previous post, we covered cross-browser and cross-device design, and how the techniques of responsive design and adaptive design could join forces and "activate!" for a more precise and optimal user experience. This allows our websites to take a more relevant form, so to speak, based on the user's technology profile (device, browser, resolution, etc.), but how can we apply this same technique and capability to meet the user's cultural context?

How to design and deploy a website user experience optimized not only for multiple browsers and resolutions but also for specific devices and even different cultures. This series explorers the layers of "compatibility" from its standard forms to today's latest challenges in delivering personalized experiences from a single manageable platform.

Basements: there’s not much to them until things like hot water heaters, washers, dryers, shelves, and other furnishings are moved in. It’s basically four walls and a floor made of concrete. When a house’s foundation is poured, which is usually the basement, they all more or less look the same, with size really the only variation. If we lived in a virtual world where such a thing would be possible, if an enterprising home builder used copies of the same basement over and over a lot of time – and money – would be saved, wouldn’t it?

In the Telecommunications industry, there's a saying, "the last mile is the longest mile." It is used to denote the so-called Information "bottleneck" when data traveling over high-speed fiber for example hits the bandwidth limitations on the last link of the journey before reaching the customer. The phrase is evocative and from its original connotation in the world of bits and bytes and fiber and copper it is now used to describe a phenomena that can affect any human endeavor, from bridge building to film making to website design and development.

Over a year ago, we started discussing the concept of "responsive design." Our own Jeremy Pratte wrote in June 2011 about the concept with his post: There IS no mobile web: Making Web Designs More Responsive. Responsive Design has recently been a very popular topic and we see more and more companies inquiring about it, but many are doing it out of fear that if they don't implement it they are missing the boat somehow.

Since 2006 I have attended many conferences on the subject of web design and development (of course I’ve also learned a lot on the job). I thought it’d be a good idea to revisit some of the predictions, tips, tricks, and best practices of the past to see how they have panned out.

No, you did not read that headline incorrectly. Yes, I am actually advocating ditching layouts altogether. No, I have not recently sustained any type of head trauma. Am I crazy? Maybe. But that’s a subject for a different post.

Based on a few client conversations that seemed to have a consistent theme, I thought I’d take a few minutes So, why do we care about mobile design anyway? Well, if you’re not reading this on a mobile device or tablet yourself, somebody else is. To be precise, approximately 6% of web traffic is mobile/tablet devices. 6 percent?! Big deal, right? With all the hype around mobile, you’d expect something higher. But, here’s the thing. That’s September’s data and in June it was 5% and March 4% and approximately 1 year ago today… just 3%.

The web changes so quickly that writing an in-depth post about a particular subject in that area almost has to be precognitive. In other words, no matter how much you research the matter at hand, in the time it takes you to write it and get it posted, there could already be new information and insights on it that could make it irrelevant. Or somebody might have posted a blog entry explaining why it’s total crap like it was the Emperor’s new clothes and the blog entry’s link has already been retweeted five thousand and one times.

I seized the opportunity to attend An Event Apart in Boston this past month and had a great time. I listened to some inspiring and thought provoking presentations, met a few fellow webbies, and learned a thing or two about websites. Here is a summary of what I took away.

I am usually not one to get out my crystal ball and predict things. Not seriously, anyway. But very rarely something will hit me (“very rarely” here meaning “once”) that make so much profound sense that it’s like an epiphany. It’s like I’m given an actual vision of the future.

I have to admit, the active state of links and buttons and whatnot was not something I was interested in setting until recently. For many years I didn’t even give this state a second thought, as the people I learned that from didn’t use it very much, either. What was most important was what “Cool Thing” the links or buttons did on hover.

Never mind that buttons on things in real life don’t change color, or dance around, when you hover your finger over them.

So, it’s time for a redesign… reskin, refresh, overhaul. However you choose to say it, it’s time to give your website a significant update to get it back in line with your organization’s changing objectives and competitive landscape.

Is Web 2.0 the handy term for a new, user-friendly and dynamic era of the web? Or is it just a buzz word? However you personally feel about the term, there are definite characteristics most people can agree on that define this new era, whatever you want to call it.